


Winter in Montsimmard

by Crisium



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-06
Updated: 2010-09-06
Packaged: 2017-10-11 13:14:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/112790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crisium/pseuds/Crisium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>An AU to "What We Become".</p>
    </blockquote>





	Winter in Montsimmard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cjk1701](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cjk1701/gifts).



> An AU to "What We Become".

The order came swiftly after the fall of the Archdemon, accompanied by a score of well-armed Orlesians: _come to Orlais or you will be brought_, as though the messengers' steel wasn't implicit threat enough. Loghain was granted only a day to put his affairs in order, a day to bid Anora farewell (though this was Alistair's palace, now, and Anora looked drawn when he'd said his goodbyes).

Loghain wasn't any more impressed with his daughter's new husband than he had been with Cailan, and Cauthrien wasn't entirely happy about staying behind in Anora's service but she'd nodded, obedient, when he'd given the order. If she was sad to see him go, she was too well-trained to give any sign. There was little enough mercy in any of this but Cauthrien's honor had ever stood out like a beacon. He could order her to stand guard at the gates of the Black City and she would guard until the day she died. She would protect Anora, no matter the cost.

It was enough, it had to be enough; if he was to be hacked to pieces for a sacrifice in Val Royeaux it was fitting that he leave the best of himself behind, out of reach.

The damp autumn wind whistled around the mastheads in the shipyard, plaintive and high. Loghain tried to ignore the clamor of Orlesian voices as the sailors readied the ship that would bear him away from Ferelden. He listened to the waves instead, to the rising and falling of the sea, ceaseless and steady. The sound of approaching men-at-arms dragged him out of his reverie: another score of watchful Orlesians, templars among them, and at their center, empty-eyed and huddled in a too-long cloak, the Warden Amell.

_Surely you're not here to see me off,_ he thought, but no, with her arrival his own guards had gone tense, almost imperceptibly more strained. Loghain had commanded men long enough to know the cues, subtle as they were, that signaled fear; the guards gave her a wide berth even as she and Loghain were ushered onto the deck of the ship. _You're going as well, then._

No need to wonder if she was given the choice he was denied, not with that many guards and that much steel.

Still, the guards' nervousness brought with it a twinge of sardonic satisfaction. As the ship heaved and headed for open water, Loghain bent in close, earning a scant flicker of surprise. "I heard it rumored once that you could read minds. Is there any truth to that?" he muttered, dispensing with unnecessary greetings and ignoring the medicine-and-mineral smell that clung to her like a fog. They hadn't spoken since the Archdemon fell; she'd been whisked away and he'd wondered idly if she truly _had_ died, Morrigan's ritual or—

"No," she muttered back, voice dull.

The nearest Orlesian was a few paces away, watching Amell with a fascinated horror as though he expected a catastrophe at any moment, sweat beading at his hairline even in the cool of the day.

"Indulge me," Loghain said under his breath. "And don't let on as much to our foreign friends."

He could almost have imagined the minute quirk of a grimace at the edge of her mouth, a bare instant of expression, if not for the way Amell leaned against the ship-railing and fixed the Orlesian guard with an unblinking stare, a considering sort of look that a hawk might give a mouse.

It was too bitter to be amusing, even in the slightest. Still, Loghain thought as the shores of Ferelden went distant and dark, there was a certain satisfaction in making the journey as much a trial for the Orlesians as it was for him.

+++

If he'd had his choice, Loghain thought, between being dropped into the center of a darkspawn nest and being dropped into the middle of Val Royeaux, he may well have opted for the darkspawn.

The city was enormous, seething like a kicked-over anthill and raucous with noise, the cobbled streets unforgiving beneath his boots as they were escorted from the docks to the Grey Warden compound. The structure was a fortress in and of itself, hunched inside the city walls. Inside it was well-furnished to the point of excess, the walls hung with richly-drawn maps of Orlais.

Ferelden seemed impossibly far away, everything he'd ever loved years and countless miles behind him. The thought made his head ache.

There was no reprieve, however, no time to catch his breath and adjust to the terrible feeling of foreignness. A young Orlesian Warden who smiled too much introduced himself in a passable approximation of the King's Tongue and led them to a meal. Loghain pointedly ate nothing, distrustful of the food, the implements, the company. But Amell seemed coaxed out of her withdrawal, just a little, glancing around the inside of the hall as she stroked her mabari's back and listened to their host. The Warden-Commander was in Val Chevin, the young man explained apologetically, pushing Amell a bowl of bread, but he should return in a few days. Until then, if there was anything they would like—

"I'd like to _leave_," Loghain said flatly.

The young Warden's smile went brittle. "My apologies. We have orders."

Loghain could guess what those orders might be; for the present, he merely watched.

+++

  
The Warden-Commander didn't arrive the next day, or the next. The meantime was mostly spent in the hall, from midmorning to evening. Loghain perused the library (how _had_ a group of Wardens come by such a disorganized collection of books?) while the young Warden from the day before seemed set out to charm Amell. When he took it upon himself to teach her, she repeated his Orlesian words and phrases, curious, and in turn he encouraged her progress, relentlessly cheerful and patient even as he corrected her mistakes.

The act of learning seemed a steadying influence. From the glances Loghain spared over the edge of a book Amell looked more collected than she'd been on the ship, the empty-eyed look gone.

On the evening of the second day the young man was called away, briefly, with a laughing comment as he disappeared down the hallway with a friend. Amell frowned after him, mouthing his parting words without understanding them. "You don't… do you speak Orlesian?"

_No_. Loghain hesitated. "I understand it well enough."

"Do you know what he said just then?"

"He called you a farm girl," he answered distractedly, flipping a page. This particular book seemed to have been written as a cure for insomnia, but at least it wasn't in Orlesian. "I assume your accent amuses him."

When seconds ticked by without response, Loghain glanced up to find Amell flushed in embarrassment, thoughts turned inward. When the young man returned, Amell made no further attempt to speak his tongue.

+++

When the Warden-Commander of Orlais arrived, the situation degraded in a matter of hours. Any pretense of a shared cause, shared brotherhood through blood, was abandoned entirely. The compound was a prison, at least for Loghain. He had expected to be raked over the coals, interrogated about the events atop Fort Drakon; he had _not_ expected for the entire affair to take only the better part of a morning. It hardly seemed as though it had begun before he was dismissed and led back to a room (and the door didn't bolt from the outside as he had half-expected but there was a pair of guards at the end of the hall, waiting). He sat on the too-soft bed and tried to think, perturbed. Surely there had to be more to this, surely this was some sort of strategy. Did they intend to attempt to wear him down over time? The Warden-Commander had seemed impatient, merely skimming the surface.

_Did you expect him to ask if you'd fathered a demon-child on the daughter of a notorious witch?_

But they didn't call him for questioning again and he didn't see Amell the rest of that day, or the next; when she finally made an appearance in the common hall she was white-faced and flanked by a pair of templars. They steered Amell toward the other end of the long table and stood, expectant, as she picked listlessly at food (and that, as much as anything, made a stirring of disquiet begin in his gut). There was no chance for discussion, not then. Loghain watched in silence as she was shepherded away again—to her own interrogation, perhaps?—and wondered privately how much information she might have given away.

 

+++

A low whimper at the door snapped Loghain out of a shallow sleep that night, and when he opened the door Dog was shivering in the hallway, hunched over with worry. "What?"

Dog licked his nose, ears flattening. My human—

And that was all Loghain could understand before the sense of Dog's anxiety disintegrated into an amorphous fear, the mabari's eyes wet and large as though he expected Loghain to be able to do something about it.

_It's the middle of the night_, he thought, rubbing one temple to soothe a headache before it could take hold. _You pick your moments, Warden._ But the guards at the end of the hall only watched, disinterested, and made no move to stop him as he followed Dog to the next room over. In the flickering light of a brazier Amell sat, breathing hard and fussing at something at her wrists.

Manacles.

Loghain shut the door behind himself, alarmed. "What did you _do_?"

She gave him a scorching glare. "Nothing." Her attention turned back to the manacles as she tried to pry them off her wrists, dark, heavy-looking things, oddly smooth and chased with runes.

They weren't bound together. It seemed an inefficient means of restraint.

"They're templar-designed," Amell murmured, as though he'd spoken, wincing as she tried to force the metal over the bones of her hand. "They keep me from feeling my own magic, keep me from being able to…" she grimaced, scraping her skin. "To cast."

Loghain leaned against the wall, impassive and ignoring Dog's whine of concern. "What did you tell them?"

She glared at him again, incredulous. "The truth." Her mouth twisted. "That I expected to die, and that I don't know why I'm alive." She jerked her head at the door meaningfully: _we aren't alone_.

Loghain gave a short nod, thinking. A brief search revealed parchment on the desk, and ink. His knees protested when he lowered himself to sit beside her on the smooth stone of the floor and write out: _Are they still questioning you?_

Amell pulled the quill from his fingers, manacle clanking on the stone as she wrote. _Testing_.

He took it back, impatient. _Why?_

She considered a moment, then wrote: _The Warden-Commander thinks I'm an abomination. Of sorts_.

Loghain scowled at her answer. _Are you?_

She blasted him a withering look but the effect was somewhat spoiled by the twisting of her fingers at the manacles, a small, constant thread of panic. _I think_, she began, and paused to frown, _they suspect me of carrying around the Archdemon's soul._

From what Riordan had said, such a thing would be impossible. _They are testing you for this?_ Loghain wrote. When she nodded, he continued, _surely they haven't found anything?_

Amell's hesitation made his blood run cold for reasons he didn't care to name.

_They've found something,_ she wrote slowly. _I don't understand most of what they're saying. I think when the_—she glanced at the door—_Archdemon died, the soul went through me on its way out. There are_—her mouth pursed in dissatisfaction—_traces_.

Traces, Loghain thought, tossing the parchment into the brazier and watching as it burned to ash, and then aloud, "Do you have a hair comb?"

She gave him an odd look, not following. He rose to sort through the flotsam of a drawer and came out with a wire comb, untwisting its delicate loops between the blunt ends of his fingers. When he took one manacled wrist in his hands and pried the makeshift lockpick between the metal and skin it took a few minutes' searching—it seemed ages since he'd had to do this and he felt damnably out of practice—but the hooked edge found the catch and the manacle clicked open. The second one came off more easily, and she gasped for air when it fell away from her skin as though surfacing from a long dive.

"Traces," he suggested, very quietly. The medicinal smell around her seemed less intense. He wondered if she'd been drugged, before.

"Like ripples through a pond, I think, after you throw in a stone," Amell murmured shakily, so low he could scarcely hear her. She raked her hands through her hair, looking tired. "It isn't _there_."

The idea that they didn't suspect him of anything was surprising; Loghain didn't know whether to trust it. He'd been prepared for worse, far worse, and to find the expected focus of interrogation pointed in an unexpected direction was unsettling. "You'll have to put those back on before morning," he cautioned under his breath, getting slowly to his feet again.

Amell nodded, resigned, eyeing the metal with loathing and what Loghain assumed to be fear. "Can you… will you do it again tomorrow?"

Loghain hesitated at the doorway. It was a risk, however small. In all likelihood he shouldn't have even done it tonight. "Perhaps."

And with that he left, slipping back to the darkness of his own room, lying in a fitful sleep half the night and waiting for an alarm that never came.

 

+++

  
Alarm or not, Loghain was loath to take a risk that seemed so unnecessary, not again. Though it seemed Amell's testing was ongoing, Dog didn't appear at Loghain's door the next night, or the next. Loghain had nearly assumed the matter closed when Amell herself barged into his room in the deep watches of the third night, feverish and strained and not bothering to knock. "Get them off," she demanded as soon as the door thudded closed, pulling the makeshift lockpick from her sleeve.

Loghain hesitated, bleary and taken aback.

"_Please_," she amended tightly, misreading his lack of action.

As though she wasn't still his commander; as though _please_ would persuade him if he was set against the idea in the first place. "You really do have the most terrible sense of timing, Warden," Loghain sighed, resigned. If the guards had seen her this upset there could be trouble; an agitated prisoner is a catastrophe waiting to happen.

And damn it all, he'd just got to sleep.

"Sit," Loghain ordered, waving one hand at the chair and feeling very tired, annoyed at the sight of her looming at the foot of his bed like a vengeful phantom. Amell sat, ramrod-straight and staring into the remnants of the fire. Loghain stoked it up wearily.

"Are you going to—?"

Loghain pulled the lockpick from her fingers, grimacing at the sight of the raw skin around the manacles. "You haven't been trying to push them off again?" Because surely if it doesn't work the first thousand times, the thousand-and-first time might do the trick, he grumbled to himself.

Her eyes were glazed, over-bright; in the firelight they seemed unnaturally reflective. "Just get them off."

Loghain slipped the lockpick into place, grimacing. The skin had swollen, leaving him little room to maneuver the pick, even though the manacles were smooth and shouldn't have caused so much discomfort. "Is it _such_ a trial, feeling merely human?" The pick-hook slid wide, missing the catch, and Loghain bit back the impulse to curse.

Amell stiffened. "You don't think I'm human?"

If Loghain had ever desired an existential discussion on the qualifications for humanity, he wouldn't have desired to conduct one with her; if he had, it wouldn't have been at this late an hour. He glanced up, ready to say as much—

And stopped. The angle and the light of the fire had rendered her nightgown translucent. Inches from his face was proof, if not of humanity, of a very apparent femininity. The slow drag of fatigue seemed to conspire with the pervasive harried feeling of being an enemy on foreign soil, muddling his thoughts; the unwelcome idea of Amell as not a Warden nor a commander but a woman lent the entire thing a surreal sense of insanity. Loghain dropped his gaze and turned his focus to the work of unfastening the manacles, rattled, and didn't look up again.

It got worse when he finished.

As soon as the second manacle came free Amell began to cry, and not a sniffled _thank you_, not a few simple tears of relief, but a torrent of sobs, heaving and messy and loud. Loghain stared for a moment, repelled. He had little experience with crying women, not ever; not Celia, not Rowan, certainly not Anora. At a loss, Loghain withdrew, sitting on the edge of his bed and wondering what to do about this new and unpleasant development. He should have left the manacles on, he thought, this overwrought she could be dangerous. What a mess the entire situation was (and what he wouldn't have done to have Cauthrien here to deal with it, just then).

The weeping didn't last long, diminishing gradually until the sounds trailed off altogether, but Amell didn't move even after she'd fallen silent. Loghain stood again, ready to say _go on then, get out_ when he discovered that Amell had slumped in the chair, already sleeping.

_Damn_.

It was more than just annoyance that prickled though his brain—how _had_ she managed to fall asleep so quickly, and like that? He could never have fallen asleep so easily—but he was too tired to act on the impulse to toss her unceremoniously out the door. If he woke her she might be agitated again, or worse, might attract the attention of their guards, and they'd find the manacles off and him with a lockpick. He rubbed at his gritty eyes, grimacing. It might not do any harm to leave her where she'd crumpled. Surely he would prefer to deal with it as little as possible.

_You'd better not snore_, he thought pointedly in her direction as though she could hear his thoughts from the Fade, resigned and dissatisfied as he stretched back out in his own bed.

 

+++

  
Three more days passed in the same grim suspension, a waiting without purpose or apparent end. Loghain spent his days in the common hall, watching the routines of the Wardens out of the corners of his eyes, looking for patterns, for holes in the weave, the suggestion of weakness in their daily rounds. Escape may have been too much to hope for but the thought of it was sustaining. It was something to do, at least, a purpose to drive him through this purposeless and ceaseless inactivity.

He did not see Amell again, nor Dog, not since they'd slipped from his room before dawn, taking the manacles with them. Loghain waited in the evenings, half-suspecting that at any moment his door would be flung open, that she'd barge in uninvited and demanding, but she didn't come. He wondered then if they had killed her, if the Orlesians would tear her to pieces looking for a soul that wasn't there, if she would break and spill the truth.

The break in the inactivity came early that fourth morning, the sound of raised voices in a nearby room compelling Loghain's attention, and he couldn't quite make out the words but he knew dissent when he heard it.

Dissent could be important.

It was. A Warden Loghain hadn't seen before stalked into the common hall, heading for him, lines of fatigue at his eyes though he couldn't be any older than Anora. "Loghain," the young man said without preamble, "I am Bernard, of the Montsimmard Wardens, and I must beg your forgiveness for my tardiness."

Loghain closed his book, wary. "Must you?"

Bernard gestured expansively, looking haggard. "My men and I were supposed to arrive a week ago to see you to Montsimmard. We have had…" He sighed. "Delays. I trust you are not inclined to stay at Val Royeaux?"

Loghain stared at him, disbelieving. This could be a trick, he thought, though Bernard's face was possessed of an altogether too honest look, as though he wouldn't know how to lie if commanded. Still, Loghain knew better. "I would call that an understatement," Loghain said carefully.

Bernard barked a short laugh, running a hand over his close-cropped hair and slumping into a seat. "I believe you would." He helped himself to the pitcher of water on the table, drinking deeply. His armor was blood-spattered, his linen collar rumpled. He looked like he hadn't slept in a week. "My men are fetching your compatriot," he said after a moment. "And then we are _leaving_ with all haste."

"Why the hurry?"

Bernard flashed a grimace as he poured another mug of water. "Because the Warden-Commander is gone for the day. I suppose you could consider this an abduction, if you were so inclined. Certainly he will not be pleased." The traces of humor faded as he looked at Loghain and lowered his voice. "You understand there was no small turmoil regarding what to do with you once you arrived in Orlais, yes?"

Loghain crossed his arms. "I suspected something of the like, yes."

Bernard sighed, wrapping his dirty hands around the mug. "Orders from Weisshaupt said nothing of imprisonment. You were to be placed in a position where you could not damage the Order; no more." He drank deeply. "I had petitioned to take you both south, and my request had been granted before, but…" He shrugged. "The new Warden-Commander is a very pious man, and he loves Orlais very much." Bernard gave Loghain a level look; Loghain read between the lines. _A patriot, and a zealot._ "He had his own ideas of how you could best be put to use, I think," Bernard continued. "And he has a brother in the templars. He has turned over two mages to the Chantry since he came to lead us. I feared neither of you would find much welcome here." Bernard signed, shaking his head. "There will be time to give you all the details later, I suppose. Montsimmard has need of you. If you agree to go."

Loghain considered the possibility of trading the fangs for the claws, of finding Montsimmard as much a prison as Val Royeaux. But at least Montsimmard was away from the city—

"Therrin will go as well, of course," Bernard assured him.

Loghain hadn't considered it, nor been particularly concerned. "Of course," he echoed, because it seemed expected of him.

 

+++

 The horses in the courtyard were massive, long-legged beasts, and Loghain held his oversized mount by the reins, waiting. Amell had taken some time to fetch, had looked ghastly when she'd finally emerged, minus the manacles but plus one scowling Orlesian mage Warden. He cursed inventively as he presented her to Bernard, something about the manacles that was just slightly too fast for Loghain to follow. Now the few Wardens heading to Montsimmard were making final preparations, securing packs, squinting up into the rain as though hoping it would let up soon.

Loghain had a feeling that it wouldn't.

But the time of their departure seemed near, and Loghain would breathe easier once Val Royeaux was lost to the horizon.

The mage Orlesian handed Amell a pair of reins, leads to a placid-looking brown horse.

Amell did nothing.

"You do ride?" Loghain asked. But no, surely she didn't, else she wouldn't be staring at the horse as though it were a puzzle to solve. She shook her head. "Here. Ride with me, then." Amell gave him an odd look, distrustful. "You'll slow us down," Loghain explained, shifting the pack on the back of his horse to create a few more inches of room. "I've no desire to linger here a moment more than necessary. You _could_ ride with one of the Orlesians, if you like," he offered, the idea only now occurring to him. "It's supposed to be a hard day's ride to Montsimmard. Unless you're sure you won't fall out of the saddle—"

Amell frowned.

Loghain bit back the impulse to sigh. "Up, then."

Amell licked her lips, uncertain; her voice, when it came, was ragged. "You expect me to levitate?"

Dog barked from across the courtyard and a couple of the Orlesian Wardens chuckled at Amell's trepidation. "I expect you to get on the horse," Loghain corrected, and then when she still did nothing, "foot goes here. And… up." Loghain did sigh, then, at Amell's brief, futile struggle with gravity. "_Up_," he said again, losing patience and heaving her bodily upward, pushing with a hand on her backside until she was at saddle-level. He thought for a moment she'd fall right over the beast's withers and down to the cobblestones on the other side, but she managed to right herself at the last second, clinging to the horse's mane desperately. She startled when Loghain mounted behind her, the saddle tilting sideways a moment, and startled again when Bernard gave a call and urged his horse forward and their horse followed suit. Amell clutched at the rain-slick edge of the saddle, miserable and stiff with fear, and when Loghain decided that her pitching off the horse entirely was a very real possibility he put an arm about her waist and she clutched at _him_. "Try and relax," he suggested, but her only response was an incredulous noise and a shake of her head that left him with a face-full of her hair.

_I'm going to hack that off with a dagger_, he thought, the second time it got into his mouth, settling in for a long and unpleasant ride into the unknown.

 

+++

He'd forgotten how sore a day in the saddle could make him. In his eagerness to be away from Val Royeaux he hadn't considered it. Bernard called a halt on account of the road being too dark to see and too slippery to trust and every muscle in his body seemed to protest when he dismounted. The Orlesians pitched up a long tent, layered to keep off the worst of the rain, and when they suggested he get some rest Loghain removed his armor and settled down warily, with Amell between himself and the other two Wardens, sleeping in a line. She wasn't much of a buffer, but then, this wasn't much of a situation to find himself in in the first place. For once, he didn't have any trouble getting to sleep, though the breathing of the other Wardens almost negated the lulling sounds of the rain. He'd write a letter, he thought as he drifted off, to Anora, to tell her where he'd been taken…

When he woke again it was the middle of the night, and rain was still drumming on the top of the tent, wet and cold. He ached, ferociously, the stiff pain through his body slicing through the lingering fog of sleep; he ached and his back was cold, but his front was warm.

Loghain took a careful breath, the last remnants of haze fading from his mind. Amell was fitted against him like a puzzle-piece and warm as a campfire and his body had responded in his sleep: his face buried in the warm mass of her hair, an insistent tug from his groin, one of his arms folded around her and his fingers relaxed around a breast. Her arm had rested on top of his, holding him in place. He bit back the urge to swear and tugged, carefully, trying to extricate himself without waking her, holding his breath in concentration.

But Amell jerked awake anyway, stretching before she stopped, suddenly, in a moment of what Loghain could only assume was stark confusion. He freed his hand, successfully if belatedly, but his attempt to roll away was met with a jarring reminder of the pain in his muscles, made agonizingly worse by the cold and sleeping on the ground. "My apologies," he managed, voice sleep-roughened even in a whisper.

When Amell didn't answer—only looked over her shoulder at him in the dark—anxiety clenched in a cold knot at his belly, a feeling not helped at all when she elbowed over and turned to face him. For a long moment she only looked at him, wordless and pillowing her head on her arm. Loghain was wondering if further apology was expected when a tingling began against his skin. A dim light glowed in Amell's palm, no brighter than a firefly as she reached up to his face. He reared his head back only a little, wary, but Amell hardly seemed to notice. She traced her fingertips down the center of his forehead, over his nose and chin, and then down, a slow bleeding of warmth in the wake of her fingers, washing the ache of out him in waves. The line of her hand continued, down his throat (and relaxing the tension in his neck), down his chest (and easing the bunched muscles of his shoulders, his back, leaving him feeling boneless and loose), and down, driving out the chill of the rain and the aches of the day.

It was not quite like anything Loghain had felt before. In the absence of pain he had the sensation of floating, dizzy and dream-bound, and even the old ache in one shoulder slipped away to nothing as the path of her fingers continued. It seemed as though she could divide him in two with a touch, but he stiffened in alarm at the sensation of her fingertips brushing over the fastenings of his trousers. If she continued on her downward path, she'd feel—

Her hand stopped, fingers resting against him. Loghain had the sense of being enfolded in magic, sunlight-warm and unexpectedly intimate. Amell's hand slipped back up along the front of his shirt as she pressed closer, shivering as though she couldn't feel her own heat, couldn't sleep for the cold. He let her huddle close to him, frowning, suppressing a grunt of surprise when she flattened herself along his body and if she couldn't feel _that_ then she truly _was_ frozen. But no, her hand trailed downward again, pressing against him experimentally through the fabric of his trousers as her thigh slid up his hip, and he clenched his teeth in shock as his pulse lurched from rested to racing in an instant. This was beyond all reason, all fathoming—no, worse, this was _insane_—but he didn't push her away, didn't so much as shift an inch to stop her when she reached into his trousers, not looking at him, wrapped a hand around his length and stroked. There were two other Wardens in the tent, still. Loghain looked wildly over at their sleeping forms, expecting… something. Anything.

Nothing. Amell was still silent, hardly breathing, face shadowed and unreadable in the darkness.

It wasn't him, Loghain knew, _he_ was perfectly sound; it was the world that had gone mad.

It wasn't even that this was an unknown drive—nights before battle, nights before leave-taking;  he knew this compulsion, had taken part more than once—but that it should be now, and here, and with Amell—

_Who else?_

The skin of her thigh was cold as he traced it up to her hip, cold and damp, and he thumbed the edge of bone there, waiting for the odd dream-feeling to end, half expecting to wake up at any moment. Neither of the Orlesians stirred in their sleep, not as Amell pulled him free of his trousers, not as he pushed aside the thin cloth of her undergarments and adjusted, nudging himself inside just a little as Amell sighed, leaning her forehead into the base of his throat and going relaxed. Loghain felt no particular desire to move, thus connected. In the absence of passion or drive he merely felt very…

Comfortable.

He would've laughed in incredulity if it hadn't been so terrible, would've written it all off as a bizarre, inexplicable hallucination but for Amell's fingers curled in the cloth of his shirt, for the skin beneath his hand and the warm puffs of breath at his chest. Loghain moved, experimentally, a slight and noiseless rocking of his hips; Amell pressed into him, pliant and responsive. The feeling of lips at his chest, moving silently and planting dry, distracted kisses on his skin seemed incredibly strange.

The Orlesian mage-Warden twitched in his sleep, face contorting as he groaned. In an instant Loghain froze, and Amell with him. When the other Warden subsided, relaxing into the bedroll, Amell pulled away, wordless and not meeting Loghain's eyes. The jolt of separation as he slipped out of her sent a shock through his nerves, all the relaxation of earlier fading away in the force of a more familiar tension. Amell merely turned her back to him and sighed as she burrowed underneath the blanket, yawned, and slept, as easily as that.

In the cold, damp tent, surrounded by Orlesians, Loghain found he couldn't get to sleep again until near morning, and by then it was more bother than it was worth.

When they set out for the day Amell mounted her own horse and rode alone (though the Orlesian mage was amused at her efforts and had to help her into the saddle), and though Loghain suspected it was neither comfortable nor her preference in the matter, she didn't complain.

He saw no reason to discuss anything that had occurred the night before, and thankfully, neither did she.

The second day's pace was more forgiving, at least, and though Loghain was relieved to put Val Royeaux behind him he privately wondered what might lie ahead at Montsimmard. Trading one set of Orlesians for another was an unpleasant proposition, and one he didn't trust. He found it unsettling that Bernard and his men seemed so very _young_.

As the morning gave way to afternoon the rain ebbed away slowly, leaving behind the washed-clean scents of field and forest, only ruined a little by the smell of wet horses and men. Dog raced down the road over and over again, pitching himself into a run and disappearing from sight, then barreling back, tongue lolling and tail wagging in joy.

It was difficult to be entirely grim in the face of such happiness, especially when Dog brought back a rather scraggly-looking hare and deposited it at Loghain's feet as a gift. None of the Orlesians had taken notice, all occupied with their horses. "Thank you," Loghain said gravely, giving Dog a pat. Dog panted, gleeful, and bounded off once more.

When Loghain glanced up Amell was watching, but if she had an opinion on the matter, she kept it to herself.

 

+++

 

If there was any mercy in being in Orlais at all, Loghain thought privately, it was that Montsimmard was so remote.

Only a few hours' ride from Lake Celestine and surrounded by leagues of swaying grass, hemmed in by deep strands of forest, Loghain found that the countryside of Montsimmard suited him well enough. It wasn't a problem with the setting by any means. No, it was the company that bothered him. Amell was innocuous enough—as innocuous as any mage could be, though he didn't see her often—but the Orlesians had their own alliances, circles upon circles of allegiances and history that moved in a kind of clockwork. It felt as though it took him ages to decipher their comings, their goings, the patterns they lived within.

Bernard was unflaggingly affable, to the point Loghain wished little more than to snap at him. He didn't want to be comrades in arms, not any more than strictly necessary, and at no point did he ever feel like a _brother_. It came to a head one morning heading out to the site of a darkspawn sighting some miles from the town, when Bernard smiled at him and said, "My grandfather had a suit of armor very like yours."

Loghain frowned. "Did he, now?" _His grandfather_, he thought, vaguely horrified.

Bernard only looked nostalgic. "He did. I used to wish I could wear it, when I was a small boy. I dreamed of being a chevalier one day." He smiled as though this was funny.

For Loghain, any trace of a pleasant mood died in an instant. "You wanted to be a chevalier?"

There was an uncomfortable silence; Bernard looked at him for a long time, considering. "Your war was over before I was old enough to know that a war was being fought, Loghain. You and your people have never been my enemy."

Loghain didn't answer. After a moment Bernard spurred his horse on, carrying him away.

+++

Mages, Loghain decided, were like dogs: they had no concept of personal space and were ever tracking in mud on the carpets. One mage at a time could be civilized enough but even a pack of two shed itself of common decorum within moments, it seemed. Amell and the Orlesian mage Adrien were ever practically in one another's laps, sharing food or a book or some spell-game Loghain couldn't begin to fathom. When the Wardens were encamped, following the darkspawn, Amell would wander, taking Dog along and returning without explanation. Bernard invariably shrugged, unconcerned—she had killed an Archdemon, what had she to fear?—and when she returned from Maker-knows-where she would settle close to Adrien at his spot by the fire. They chattered to one another in what Loghain guessed was Tevinter, a twining spill of words and expressions.

In the light of the campfire Loghain watched warily as Amell traced the myriad knife-scars on Adrien's hands, troubled. And after she had fallen asleep, Loghain watched as well; Adrien mapped the tracks of her veins as she slept, tapping absently at her pulse-points like the rhythm of a faltering heart.

+++

Still, there were moments. The darkspawn were without doubt the most unambiguous enemy Loghain had ever faced (they neither begged for mercy nor gave it, nor did they _look_ at him as Bernard did ever so often). There was a freedom in fighting, a headlong abandon to the rush of battle and the clash of steel, the struggle for survival and finally, victory. When you were raised for war there was a grim satisfaction in it, in driving out the darkspawn, in cutting them down where they stood. It was good to be out, to feel his nerves thrum in anticipation, the keen sharpening of focus, and it was difficult not to be pleased when another battle had passed.

"I think you're enjoying this," Amell said wryly after a particularly taxing skirmish. She began weaving a spell to knit together his scalp where he'd taken a glancing hit.

"Do you? You think I find fighting for my life against monstrosities of nature _pleasant?_" Loghain demanded with a pique he didn't quite feel, not with his heart still pounding like a war drum and every inch of him feeling so alive, welcoming the spill of magic as it trickled into his head.

"Yes," she answered bluntly, skimming fingertips through his hair to make sure the wound had closed.

Loghain winced at the sore spot as she touched it. "One would have to be a madman to find this enjoyable, Warden."

With her hands still in his hair, she quirked a smile. It seemed to soften her, just for a moment.

 

+++

 

It was nearly as much as surprise to Loghain himself as it was to Amell when he sought her out on a particular night when winter began to settle over Montsimmard in earnest, holding a pair of ale-bottles. Amell was writing when he came into her room, bent busily over some correspondence she shuffled out of the way at the sight of him. "You're..."

"Here," Loghain offered, setting down a bottle of ale in the space her letter had occupied moments before. "Have a drink with me."

She glanced at him, bemused. "Drink. With you."

"I trust you know how?" he asked, just the littlest bit pointedly.

Amell turned in her chair, considering him as though she'd never seen him before, one hand wrapping around the base of the bottle. "You're... _celebrating_ something, aren't you? You look..."

For a moment Loghain let the sentence hang, curious (and not least because she made it sound such a scandal that he would ever celebrate anything); finally she gave a disbelieving half-smile.

"You know your history, I take it?"

She glanced at the bottle, skeptical. "Is this some sort of test?"

"The history of Ferelden," Loghain insisted.

Amell only looked expectant. Loghain sighed, resigned to filling in the blanks of her inadequate education. "An anniversary of victory. A rather important victory, at least," he allowed. "Personally speaking."

He could practically hear her thinking; after a moment her face relaxed in understanding. "Oh."

"Normally," he conceded, "I'd have a drink with Cauthrien, but you'll have to do."

Amell's expression went wry. "I'm touched."

"Don't be." He raised his bottle. "You're Fereldan. You're close enough to an ally, under the circumstances. Just drink."

She did, and he followed suit. It wasn't half bad, considering, he thought, in toast to the ones who hadn't survived, the ones who had, the ones still alive—

But Amell looked thoughtful, turning the bottle slowly in her hands. "I'm not really a Fereldan, though."

Ale was meant to be swallowed, not inhaled, Loghain thought distantly as he tried to cough the fiery liquid from his lungs. "I do hope you've an _explanation_ for that," he managed at last, distinctly peeved.

"Well," Amell said, thinking. "I was raised in one politically neutral organization and then given over to another. Nationalism was never much encouraged in the Circle. We had our own politics to navigate. Ferelden always seemed so..." she thought. "So distant. Not our concern at all."

It was so warm in her room. Loghain tugged absently at his collar, scowling. "But you _are_ Fereldan."

Amell shrugged. "Technically, I suppose. Funny that I never really saw my homeland until I was running from you and your men," she added lightly, slipping up to sit on the edge of her desk and doing a terrible job of hiding a smirk behind the lip of her bottle.

"You're welcome," Loghain replied. She made a quiet noise of amusement. He took another drink, holding it on his tongue for a moment as he thought. "I had to wonder if you'd the intention of going native once you'd got here," he admitted. She'd seemed to have such weaker sense of what it meant to be Fereldan, and then... "What with your blood mage... companion," he finished.

Amell looked perplexed. "Adrien?"

"Yes." He leaned against her mantel. "He _is_ a blood mage, is he not?"

"Yes, but..." Amell's expression contorted. "We're not involved."

Loghain raised an eyebrow. "All that fawning over one another like a couple of pups, then..." Not that it mattered, of course, not that it was any of his business, but if his only Fereldan ally had been compromised…

"Fawning?" Amell choked, incredulous. "I don't _fawn_ over anyone! We're mages," she barreled on, cutting off his next remark. "_You_ live for twenty years in a narrow little tower with narrow little rules and see if you don't end up living on top of people."

"I—"

"And we're not _involved_," Amell said again, more heatedly. Was it the fire of the argument that made her look flushed or the ale?

"No?"

"No," Amell growled. "Adrien happens to be desperately in love with _Bernard_." Her face fell, the spark of passion fading. "Don't tell him. Bernard doesn't know. Yet."

"In love with Bernard?" Loghain echoed, doubtful. "_That_ Bernard, the whelp who—"

"And why not?" Amell asked, crossing her arms and looking snippy, swinging her feet under the desk. "He's loyal. He's intelligent. He's _very_ handsome."

Loghain snorted.

"He is," Amell insisted. "He's also funny and very kind."

Loghain glared at her, askance. "Kind."

"Yes."

"And this is so important, is it?" he asked, feeling the perilous little voice in the back of his head that warned him that he was arguing for the sake of arguing, that some fights were best avoided.

But Amell was staring at him as though he were an ogre in a court dress. "_Yes_."

"I see," he said, though he didn't feel that he truly did. He'd not thought of Bernard as kind. Had not thought much about him at all, in truth, save as a chess-piece moving under the hands of an invisible player. The warm glow of ale suffused his chest, coaxed forth a certain lax slowness in his brain, making his thoughts feel as though they were swimming in light. It did seem hot in here, distinctly so, though the rest of the Warden's fort seemed perpetually frozen.

"Kind," Loghain repeated, as though the word tasted unfamiliar. "So Bernard is kind and I am not, is that what you mean?" His head buzzed pleasantly; he wondered if it was from ambient magic as much as ale, if the heat was coming from her as though she were a very small sun. _Kind_, he thought, curious and turning the thought over like a jewel in the light, examining the facets.

Amell shrugged, not quite looking at him. "You're kind to my dog." She crossed her ankles, kicked once. "It's close enough."

Loghain looked at her, intent. There was something here, something he wasn't quite...

She had made him warm before, warm as though he'd been bathed in sunlight, and they'd never spoken of it. They had fought shoulder-to-shoulder and fallen into the clockwork routine of circles and allegiances; she was his closest ally in the entire country and they'd never _spoken_, not honestly. Loghain stared at her as though he could bare the inner workings of her brain but she avoided his eyes.

"Warden—"

"Loghain," she sighed, and she did look at him, then. "You're a Warden. We're surrounded by Grey Wardens. You'd think at some point you'd realize that 'Warden' isn't much of a distinction."

Loghain considered it, taken aback. True enough, he supposed, though it had been a distinction for him. But he wasn't going to tell her that in some familiar corner of his brain she had been _the_ Warden, that it had had meaning, if only to himself.

Amell tilted her head, thinking. "I have a name," she offered at last, lightly. "Therrin—"

"I am _not_ calling you Therrin," he cut in, irked.

She… was that a smirk? It was, ever so faint but there. "It's a perfectly serviceable name." When she looked at him she seemed amused but also something else, heavy-lidded and wry, the iron-edged flick of a challenge in her eyes.

A challenge, he thought, and then: ha. What sort of a challenge would it be? He'd already bedded her. (Once, badly.) But as the silence began to lengthen he found himself wondering, a tenacious curiosity about what it could be like under the right circumstances. Last time had been stone-silent and terrible, but it could be… The thought of what it might be like came unbidden; of something not quiet, of that soft-looking mouth teasing his own, of her body beneath his hands, of—

"Loghain," she said into the silence, looking wary.

He shook himself. "I'm not calling you by your given name," he said, walking slowly closer.

She raised an eyebrow. "Oh?" And then, with a snort, "No, of course not."

"However," he relented, "'Warden' is... unspecific." As he closed the distance he couldn't tell if it was just curiosity on her face or something else. It had to be, he thought, though she wasn't as open as the (_Orlesians_) others, the quirk at the edge of her mouth was clear enough.

She crossed her arms, and at this angle it only enhanced his view of her chest (and the weeks of settled living and regular meals had been kind to her, had lain flesh over her sharper angles, had given her breasts a dimension and heft his fingers itched to weigh for themselves). "You have something in mind, then," she said, not particularly asking. He almost gave a snort of laughter.

Just as well she couldn't read his mind, not then.

Whoever came up with robes should be congratulated, he thought dimly as she crossed her legs at the knee, as he contemplated the curve of her calf and the line of her thigh and the shadowed reaches only suggesting at what rested beyond. He knew, and it was maddening that he would know without understanding, as though he'd raced through a tour of a foreign land without once looking around to take in the sights. A quick coupling in a tent was nothing like what he wanted now, with weeks and miles behind them and only a pair of strides between them in the warmth of the room. "Amell," he said at last, taking a last sip of his ale before setting it aside with all deliberation.

She watched him, waiting. "Wardens are supposed to give up their last names." She knew, damn her, she knew perfectly well what was racing through his mind in fevered streams of light. She knew and from the hint of a smolder in her gaze she wasn't immune, either. It seemed improbably enticing, this: an exchange of looks, of half-expressed tension, of something in his brain urging more, more, more, and all the while the conversation stayed light, seductively and maddeningly superficial while the currents beneath ran deep and dark.

Loghain shook his head, edging closer. "Not us." He was only inches away, now, could feel heat radiating from her in soft, baking waves: a spell, surely, one he could stand to be engulfed within all winter. Her knees uncrossed at his approach, and this close she had to tilt her head back to look him in the face.

"And if Amell turns out to be an Orlesian name?" she breathed. The hitch of her chest at his proximity was deeply rewarding.

Enough waiting. "Then Warden it is," Loghain answered, satisfied, and he closed the distance and kissed her.

She arched into his touch, a disbelieving huff of laughter lost in his mouth and quickly dissolving into a small sound of encouragement that urged Loghain in closer, pushing in between her knees and bending to better capture her mouth with his own. She tasted of ale and minerals and he felt her reach to hold on to him, her hands skimming along his shoulders and arms, the planes of his back, pulling him in ever-closer. He couldn't resist the suggestion of such an invitation, not coupled as it was with the hot tease of her mouth at his lips, the hurried slide of kisses down his jaw and throat making his nerves thrum with the heedless ache of anticipation. The hem of her robe crinkled beneath his fingers, falling out of the way as though eager to part from her skin, and Loghain pushed it higher, stroking the expanse of her thigh with one hand and bracing on the desktop with the other, mesmerized. The first time in the tent was a waste. If he'd known just a kiss would be like this he'd have waited, would have done it properly.

When he pulled back for air her cheeks were flushed, her limbs fetchingly braced for balance on the desk as she gasped for air, but then he caught a quicksilver flash of something else, an overpowered and wary look, not quite drowned out by desire.

Properly, he thought, and then swallowed around the sudden dryness of his throat. "Bed?"

Amell nodded, recovering and smoothing her robe back down her legs from habit. "Yes." There was a throatiness in her voice that make his pulse jump, made his hands clench; but with the pair of them on the bed the momentum faltered enough for clarity to creep back.

She knelt, uncertain, and he didn't know if she expected guidance or if words would quell this before it could truly begin. After a few moments' hesitation he leaned in, slipping a hand into her (horrible) hair and kissing her mouth and drawing her down above him. Amell seemed to melt, stretching in luxurious contentment even as she responded to his kiss. She straddled his waist and tugged at his shirt, impatient and not bothering with the fastenings at the collar. Loghain had the split-second image of being strangled in his own clothing and undid them himself. She stared at his body once he'd tossed the shirt away, her hands following the path of her eyes as she took him in.

She smiled when he reached for the sash of her robes, a quick grin that made her seem painfully young before it faded, leaving an almost unexpected ardor in its wake. Loghain tugged, intent, fingers pulling at the knot.

Whoever came up with robes should be dragged outside and _flogged_, he thought in frustration as the knot led to another which led to another, twists and turns of fabric that stayed stubbornly closed beneath his hands as he pulled. He could feel the soft heat of her; they were pressed together already, her thighs cradling his hips and her body rubbing against him with every torturous movement. "Here," she said at last, impatient, pushing his hands away from the corselet. She did something with her fingers nearly too fast to follow, and the sash came free, the corselet only a moment behind. Amell dragged her robes over her head without ceremony, balled them up, and tossed them to the floor. Before he could think to admire the view of her in a breastband and smalls she fell to the mattress beside him and wriggled out of those, too.

The view as she straddled him this time made what little blood had been pounding in his head rush lower, a tight, tense feeling at his groin that intensified with every breath. The sensation was powerful enough to leave him dizzy, even as she leaned forward and nipped at his bottom lip, trailing one warm hand beneath his waistline and wrapping her fingers around him eagerly. Off, he thought, the weight of his trousers against his skin almost unbearable, get it _off_. No complicated knots here: Amell undid the fastenings herself, inching them down slowly over his hips, moving backwards along his body with the fabric as he shifted to accommodate her. He wasn't prepared for the heat of her mouth as she licked the swollen head of his erection, taking his length in a hand and squeezing. He held himself still and tried not to shake at the feeling of the suction of her mouth. Her tongue curled around his shaft and he grasped at the bed-linens, trying to stay silent and trying not to thrust into her mouth. His thighs tensed with the effort and she noticed, looked up at him, and smiled.

There was simply no appealing way to strip off pants and smallclothes, not that Loghain knew. He stripped as efficiently as he could and leaned back to the mattress, stretching out close to Amell's body. Every gap in the momentum seemed to push him back, and though he lay beside her skin-to-skin he had the near-worried inclination not to rush. He rested a hand at her waist, quashing any of his more overeager desires. Here there was plenty of time and no audience to wake up and no need at all to hurry. He should have considered Amell's level of inborn patience, however, because she squirmed against him, restless and seeking, rolling atop him and, in one move, adjusting them both and sliding down fully onto him. Loghain's hands clutched at her hips. The movement had been a surprise, he hadn't been ready, he'd thought they had long minutes yet of preparation.

When she braced her hands on his chest and her mouth fell open, gasping out his name, he found he couldn't begrudge her the hurry.

He wondered feverishly if she was casting spells as they moved, if she was whispering arcane runes between the moans and thrusts. Every nerve sang with pleasure and reward, every inch of him yearned upwards for more, for the grasp of her hands at his flesh, for the slick, inviting heat between her legs that slipped closer around him with every buck and rise. Her muscles trembled astride his hips as they moved, both of them surging and groping and kissing deeply between breaths; he clenched his teeth with the effort and planted his hands on her thighs and pushed himself in as far as he could.

Properly, Loghain thought distantly as their movements tipped into a steady, breathless rhythm, he could've done this slowly, could've made—

Above him, Amell pitched forward, groaning and sucking greedily at his skin, the rhythm of her hips faltering as she ground into him, writhed against him and clutched at his shoulders as he felt her tighten around him. Before she fell quiet he bit back a half-delirious word that threatened to burst from his lips, not trusting his own voice, as the heat spiked in his groin and spilled into blessed release, an almost wrenching force of pleasure that left him wrung out and shaking in its aftermath.

Amell collapsed sideways, breathing hard and damp with sweat, eyes dark and dilated as she smiled. If it was nearly a smirk, Loghain could forgive it, at least this once. She hadn't moved far; he could still feel the heat radiating from her body. Ha, he thought as she took a shuddering breath and closed her eyes, I wager you'll be asleep before the minute's out.

But Loghain was wrong. Thus sated, sleep crept up on him first, all unexpected, as he exhaled deeply and relaxed into the rumpled linens of Amell's bed.

 

+++

 

Little changed after that. There were still darkspawn to fight, there were patrols to ride, long treks out to the barren expanse of the Flats, rides eastward through the Dales. The winter charged in with an icy hiss, a cutting wind that seemed to slice through Loghain's cloaks and clothes and down to the marrow of his bones. It was a leveling cold, the kind that screamed through the stands of bare trees and howled around the fort, the kind of cold that made the land seem to fall dormant in self-defense and drove the Wardens indoors.

There were advantages to having a mage about in the mornings, he thought. The frigid temperature exacerbated aches and old wounds. He'd get up first and go over the records he'd been studying, and then return to bed when Amell finally stirred. She'd breathe a spell against the back of his shoulder and in an instant he'd be enfolded in warmth, radiating down to his bones and easing every lingering pain, every stiff joint and tired muscle.

It was not a time of idleness, however, no matter how much it seemed as though the weather would force them into inaction. Bernard insisted that the lull in the presence of darkspawn was merely a vital opportunity to train, one Loghain found himself agreeing with almost grudgingly. Not that he feared for the waning of his own skills—he would never allow something so hard-won to slip away, especially not here in Orlais—but as the fighters sparred and honed their skills, a particularly glaring omission of training came to light.

He shouldn't have been surprised that Amell had never been trained to handle a blade—though that display in fighting the archdemon would've been evidence otherwise—but at Montsimmard even Orlesian mages had trained in weaponry, prepared in case their powers were stripped away by templars (or more likely, out so far from the chantry, those among the darkspawn emissaries who were cunning enough to use neutralization glyphs to devastating effect).

  
Loghain thought it eminently sensible that Amell should expand her own capabilities, and though she seemed hesitant at first she did, eventually, agree.

He had not anticipated that she would be so hopeless a study at blades. She did try, she truly did. It simply didn't seem to help.

What she needed, Loghain decided, was more practice. With the snow outside the fort hip-deep and nothing else to occupy him, he walked her through the lessons, again and again, until sweat shone on her skin and trickled down into her robe in damp lines, until her chest heaved for air. She was beginning to get it, he thought when she successfully deflected a blow at full force, the first sign of competence in a week. Loghain wasn't winded in the slightest. Pleased at her progress he pushed harder, putting his weight into a shove that she was supposed to dodge—

And didn't.

Instead she tumbled to the ground with an undignified "oof", sprawling gracelessly as her sword clattered to the flagstones. "You're dead," he informed her drily, emphasizing the point with a minute jab of his sword-tip in her direction.

Amell blew hair out of her eyes, nettled and looking thoroughly disgusted. "It's that sword. It's too heavy."

"It's the lightest one in the armory. Anything smaller and you'll be waving around a butter knife."

She glared at him, embarrassed. "This isn't exactly a fair fight. If I could've cast—"

"Fair?" Loghain repeated, surprised. "You think any fight is fair?" She didn't answer, nor did she try to stand again. Instead she rested her elbows on her knees and sank her head into her hands, sighing. "You should know better. You think the darkspawn give a moment's thought to fair?" he went on. "No capable fighter would ever expect fairness in a fight; what matters is—"

Amell gave a wry, tired laugh. "I hate you so much right now."

Loghain hesitated, taken aback by the small, unexpectedly visceral hit of the words. Amell's mouth twisted and she glared up at him again. "You _know_ I'm a capable fighter."

He did; the feeling of his defeat at that Landsmeet was forever burned into his brain. Since then she'd killed… perhaps hundreds of darkspawn, and who knew how many people? "You are, of course," he allowed, relenting. No point in pressing. He knew how badly wounded pride could sting.

She pushed to her feet as though slogging through honey to her own execution. "Tomorrow," she said, sounding faintly sulky, "I think we should spar again. My magic against yours."

Loghain didn't quite laugh. "I think that sounds eminently fair."

She made a face at him.

"Get your sword and quit moping, then," he needled, rewarded with a dirty look. "Lest we add laziness to your growing list of vices."

He'd thought she'd fight harder thus provoked; it turned out he was right. Later that evening she made up for all the spells she hadn't cast before, pressing him into the sheets and hovering above him, wrapping her tongue around low, complicated syllables of Arcanum that made him shudder. There was an inhuman light in her eyes, thin streams of magic issuing from her fingertips as she touched his skin, spreading trails of warmth. He held himself as still as possible under her ministrations, as the spells began to interweave and lace themselves along his hands, his arms, twining along his spine and sending out echoes of sensation through every nerve in his body—a slide of electricity that set the hairs at the back of his neck rising, his skin tingling, a kiss of frost that made his breath hiss out through his teeth. It was a feeling as precarious as it was arresting—he knew very well the devastating power behind her spells, could guess at the restraint required to keep from killing him with a moment's lapse of concentration. He lay still until he couldn't, anymore, until inaction became impossible; later, as he was catching his breath, he told her he thought she'd rather made her point. She snorted in laughter, pleased and seeming merely human again beside him.

+++

The worst of winter passed, though it seemed in no particular hurry to give way to spring. It was still terribly cold when the darkspawn began appearing at the edges of the Wardens' senses again, a fleeting feeling that could render an entire hall's worth of people silent in an instant. The snows had melted, pooling in hollows and ditches and refreezing in crusty sheets across the landscape as they set out east, towards the darkspawn.

It was a relief after the confinement of midwinter to be out, and Loghain insisted that the air was bracing when Amell shivered and called it _sodding cold_. The prospect of a significant group of darkspawn ahead was a sobering one, but even so the journey wasn't all grim. Dog followed him everywhere, endlessly optimistic, and at night the frosty stillness of the air made the stars seem very bright and very close.

The Wardens felt the darkspawn more acutely as they traveled, a simmering presence at the corners of their senses, but battle, when it came upon them, was not what they expected. Loghain had heard the muttering that there were war bands left over from the Blight but hadn't believed they would make it so far west, but there was a ripping feeling along his nerves, a screech as shrieks came howling out of the darkness, and he barely had time to dismount before every one of the Wardens was embattled. The lesser skirmishes he'd fought in months ago were nothing like this. It seemed now there were ten darkspawn for every Warden, a number which doubled and redoubled as they flooded out of the trees and burst from tunnels underground. It was poor footing for fighting and the battle seemed like a nightmare, suspended in time. Loghain fought, one stroke at a time, one foe dead and then another and then two more, the noise a maelstrom in his ears, the ground slick and red with blood and ichor. He fought, past exhaustion, past the uneasy sense that human voices seemed ever-fewer in the chaos, far away and diminishing quickly.

Loghain spotted the darkspawn general at last, the shape of him familiar from those agonizing hours during the battle at Denerim when he'd been so sure they'd lose the whole city. He charged, rallying what was left of his endurance, determined to end it here, now. The battle was excruciatingly hard, sapping him to the very brink of his strength. At last the general fell, monstrous roars silenced, but not before one final spell, a jolt of lightning that made Loghain's brain pound red and his lungs forget how to breathe, a wall of magic that sent him flying backwards and landing hard.

It began to sleet, then, sometime before he could get his limbs to stop jerking enough to stand. He couldn't hear the other Wardens, not through the ringing in his ears or the icy hiss of the wind, but he set off in the direction they'd been when the battle began, walking slowly and waiting for another attack.

He found them—or rather, what was left of them—beneath a blackened tree, a handful of battered figures hunched over something.

Someone, rather. He recognized Adrien's corpse first, the pale hair fanned against the ground and his eyes glazed in death, and then Bernard, bloody but alive, and behind him, the twin Dalish and lastly (and to his profound relief), Amell, so covered in filth it took him a moment to identify her.

They had numbered twenty when they'd set out, now there remained only five. A single horse survived the battle, nickering pitifully at their approach. After Amell burned the bodies of the fallen Wardens they turned westward for the long, hard trek back to Montsimmard.

After his turn at watch Loghain retreated to Amell's meager little tent, teetering on the edges of sleep without falling. Her lying awake in the darkness seemed out of the natural order of things, and she held to him reflexively, staring at nothing. He gave up on sleep and pulled her closer for warmth, mapping out the new gashes on her skin with his hands from where hastily-cast healing spells hadn't yet been corrected: a furrow down the length of one arm, a raised slash horrifically close to her windpipe, a long slice that spanned the entire width of her back and had shredded her robe. The world seemed to tilt, to tighten, something clenching in his throat. "You'll need to learn to wear armor," he said in a low voice, feeling exhaustion like a weight pressing into his chest. "You can begin training as soon as we return to Montsimmard."

It roused her attention and for a moment he thought she'd argue and then he'd have to insist, have to explain why it felt so painfully necessary in the forefront of his brain. But she didn't argue, didn't do anything but lie awake through the night, holding to him in silence.

+++

Amell never did take well to wearing armor. She complained that it was too heavy, even leathers, even though Loghain was damned tempted to find a set of scales and weigh the things and make it perfectly clear that no, half again the weight of her robes wasn't going to suffocate her as she claimed. She had a remarkable lack of improvement training with a blade, as well, but here Loghain didn't feel inclined to press. For a while, the fort seemed to echo with the loss of so many Wardens, and with the loss of Adrien there were no more comfortable conversations in Tevinter, no more sitting inappropriately close to anyone. While the new Wardens who came down from Val Royeaux sparred Amell would sit nearby (on the ground, on a bookshelf, beneath a table, until Loghain had to wonder if she might have developed an allergy to chairs); she sat, immersed in a shimmering circle of her own magic, and rarely spoke.

Loghain watched from a distance, perturbed and uncertain of whether the quiet was a truly peaceful one or simply the precursor to a storm.

Slowly, the days began to lengthen; slowly, Amell seemed to return to herself. She read books until late in the night, a volume in one hand and a miniature ball of fire in the other for light, she invited him to bed in the middle of the afternoons (_not to sleep_, she said, as though her hand tugging at his waistband wasn't signal enough of her intentions). A mile from the fort he found a bee nest in a tree and (in a moment of supreme foolishness) climbed up the small ways to fetch her some honey as she looked on, much impressed. The endeavor was a bad idea from the beginning, he knew. The tree-trunk was slenderer than he really trusted, he nearly slipped on an invisible patch of ice, and the tree-limbs proved to have an abundance of small, dark thorns that scratched his wrist as he reached into the nest. The bees were slow and unprotesting in the cold, and back on the ground Amell took the small, waxy chunk from his fingers and smiled at him, cheeks pink from the bite of the wind, forgetting the honey until it had oozed out all over her hand.

Winter in Montsimmard could have been worse, Loghain thought, on the rare occasion he considered it at all.

And then, when the first flowers began to thrust themselves upwards through the snows, Leliana arrived.

 

+++

 

It made Loghain uneasy when the carriage that bore Leliana to Montsimmard didn't _leave_.

He stayed to listen as Leliana prattled on to Amell—about the journey, the ship, laughing over a particularly handsome sailor who'd proposed on the way—hoping that Leliana would eventually get around to confessing the reason for her long journey. Denerim to Montsimmard was hardly a pleasure trip; there had to be a reason she'd come.

There was.

_Alistair needs you as a liaison_, Leliana said, explaining the wreck the fledgling king had made of Amaranthine when he'd handed it over to the Orlesians. _He petitioned Weisshaupt directly to get you back. Ferelden needs you. Come home._

Loghain listened, sick from contempt at the idea of Alistair calling Amell to heel to fix a problem he'd created himself, from anger at the idea of Anora being thrust aside by an idiot king pining over a lost love, from a seething envy at the prospect that Amell didn't even care for Ferelden but that she would get to return home.

And she would, he decided; she had to. It would be civil war if something wasn't done and Maker knew Alistair wouldn't solve it on his own. All of Amaranthine would fall in line if she gave the order. People followed her.

He had, at least, for what it had been worth.

There was a moment's bitterness at the thought that she might fall into Alistair's bed again once she reached Ferelden, might prove complicit in harming Anora. But Amell hesitated, looking at Loghain as though he might tell her to stay, or worse, might _ask_ her to stay, as though she wasn't needed in Ferelden, as though the path of duty wasn't clear and absolute.

She was packing when he found her, later. The idea that she knew what must be done should have brought with it more pride and less of this inexplicable _something_ that seemed lodged in him like a stone. "Loghain," she said when she noticed him, looking lost.

He sat down on the edge of the bed they'd shared. An intimate thing, it seemed now, for all it had been so plainly practical before. "Be careful with the Orlesians in Amaranthine," he cautioned. The urge to say something surged, pressed, and because advice seemed the most useful thing he could say, he went on, "Vigil's Keep is sturdy enough but the port is a weak point. It'll need a good overseer. A veteran of the city guard would be best. Someone who knows Amaranthine—"

"Loghain," Amell said again, more insistent. She twisted her fingers in the sleeve of her robe and her eyes were suspiciously bright.

"You're not going to _cry_ again," he demanded, vaguely horrified and not quite a question.

"No." She looked thoughtful, as though grasping for words. But after a moment of looking at him as though she really could read his mind, she turned aside, buckled the pack that held her few possessions, and slung it over her shoulder. "Be careful," she murmured, and kissed him briefly, quietly, before pulling away.

No answer in the world seemed adequate to that. She slipped out the door and closed it behind her, and by the time Loghain ventured out again her carriage had already left for Val Royeaux.

The fort seemed larger without her, then, the hallways grey and his room cold. Alone, Loghain faced head-on the reality of being the only Fereldan among the Grey Wardens of Orlais, and was unable to stop himself from dwelling on all that now seemed so very far away.

 

+++

 

Summer in Montsimmard was hotter than he remembered summers in Ferelden being. The temperature soared far earlier in the season than it seemed it ought to and the fields came alive with insects and rabbits seemingly overnight. With the darkspawn quiet Loghain had time to himself, more than he could possibly have wanted. He pored over the Wardens' records and requested more from Val Royeaux, committing the history of the order to memory (and prodigious stacks of notes). He trounced Bernard at chess. He wrote a letter to Denerim, asking after the possibility of having a mabari pup shipped to Montsimmard.

He'd been out hunting the day Amell returned, had just returned to the fort when he spotted her riding in at speed with a trio of companions behind her. From the fort he could hear voices, curious, could hear the door to the courtyard swing open. Loghain _knew_ that other figure; the familiarity of it nagged at him.

Cauthrien.

A dual burst of relish and annoyance washed over him at the sight of her. He had missed her, but he had told her to stay with Anora.

The horses jogged to a stop. Immediately, a blond mage pitched over the withers of his horse and tumbled to the ground. "_Ow_."

Loghain glanced at him, and then, disturbed, looked again, more keenly. _Surely not_, he thought, but when the young man looked up… "You've a knack for collecting, Warden," Loghain said, his voice sounding far away to his own ears. _Where _do_ you find them? _Perhaps the day was too hot and that the cause of his sudden disorientation, the feeling that none of this was real…

Amell led her spotted horse by the reins, looking at Loghain in a way that made the whole thing feel that much more surreal. "It's Warden-Commander, actually," she corrected mildly, tapping the pair of griffons at the breastplate of her armored robe. The corner of her mouth twitched as though she was suppressing a smile. "Is Bernard around?"

"Inside, I believe," Loghain answered, bemused. "What—" He couldn't very well ask _what in the world are you doing here?_ but the words seemed to rise in his throat. "Cauthrien?"

Cauthrien grinned. "Hello, ser."

"You're supposed to be guarding Anora," he managed.

"No, ser," she answered, almost apologetically. "You put me into her service. She sent me here. She was very… adamant, that I come, when she heard that the War— that the Commander— was coming for you."

For—

"Anora doesn't know anything about this," Amell corrected, eyes to the heavens. "Officially, anyway."

At that, some of the haze of Loghain's brain cleared. "You haven't done something—" To jeopardize her, Loghain almost finished, but Amell was shaking her head.

"Warden business. _Strictly_ apolitical. Though," she conceded. "It might not go over well, and if it doesn't, it'll be on me."

"You're not pretty enough to be a martyr," the blond mage said, dusting off his robes.

"_What_ might not go over well?" Loghain cut in, the nearly dizzy disorientation of earlier giving way to a sharp-edged clarity.

"Poaching." Amell gave a short laugh and handed off her horse's reins to… was that one of the Howe boys?

Loghain blinked. "What have you poached?"

She smiled, a warm look that brought to mind the taste of honey. "You." When he stared at her, she crossed her arms, edging forward and toeing at the dirt. "You… well, I suppose you could consider this an abduction." She glanced back at the snickering blond mage with a look of annoyance. "Here." She strode past Loghain into the courtyard, ducking into one of the little storage rooms and motioning him to follow. It was packed with bits of tack, and smelled of leather.

"Weisshaupt reconsidered?" he asked, momentarily hopeful.

She shook her head. "I don't know yet. I don't know if the message made it." She gave a rueful half-smile. "But I'm told it's easier to get forgiveness than permission." And when he didn't answer immediately, she leaned in, intent. "As much as I wish this was just a social call, it's not. The Orlesian Wardens at Amaranthine are dead. We think the darkspawn might be gathering for something big but we don't know what, or why, and if they expect me to rebuild the order in Ferelden on my own they can't begrudge me gathering all my Fereldan Wardens for the fight."

All your Fereldan Wardens, Loghain thought, but didn't have time to think anything else because Amell reached for him and crushed her lips to his in a searing shock of a kiss. "Sorry," she managed when she broke away, seconds later. Her hair was in ludicrous disarray, her cheeks hot and lips wet. "I might have been thinking about that for the last few mont—"

The word was cut off when Loghain kissed her back, hard; she didn't seem in a mood to complain. They couldn't stay long. His brain had already sped into action, thinking about darkspawn and dead Wardens, about a gathering and a plot. Beyond the door lay war, and Ferelden, and a thousand things to do.

Amell smiled, a small, private expression, and led the way out. "Let's go home," she said as the door clattered closed behind them. Loghain looked to the horizon to where Ferelden was waiting, and agreed.

 


End file.
